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Christie: I am embarrassed and humiliated

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Story highlights

Documents to be released are from a former Christie ally, an official says

More than 1,000 pages of documents are to be released Friday morning, official says

Fort Lee mayor tells CNN that he believes more still to come in scandal

Governor says he is "embarrassed and humiliated" by conduct of aides

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's usual swagger and bluster were gone.

In its place Thursday was an apologetic and contrite Christie trying to control an unfolding political scandal that has upended his administration over news one of his top aides and a political ally targeted a mayor with a scheme to tie up traffic in his town as punishment for not supporting their boss for re-election.

"I am who I am, but I am not a bully," Christie said during a nearly two-hour press conference where he distanced himself from the actions, saying "I knew nothing about this" and he had "nothing to hide."

But even as Christie worked to minimize the damage that could mean big problems should he run for President, the fallout could mount with word the New Jersey State Assembly committee looking into the scandal plans on Friday to release nearly 1,000 pages of documents collected in its investigation.

What is in those documents may add to the growing legal questions now facing the governor's administration, which is under scrutiny by the U.S. Attorney's office, with the help of FBI investigators, to see if any federal laws were broken, a law enforcement source tells CNN.

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal 21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was not indicted as part of the Bridgegate scandal. But one of his appointees pled guilty and 2 former staffers face criminal charges.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – David Wildstein, a former top Christie appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit fraud on federally funded property and one civil rights violation.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Bridget Anne Kelly, Gov. Chris Christie deputy chief of staff, was fired when her e-mail about it being time for "traffic in Fort Lee" became the center of the scandal. She has been charged with nine criminal counts, including conspiracy and fraud.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Bill Baroni was executive deputy director of the Port Authority until he resigned amid the scandal in December 2014. He has been charged them with nine criminal counts, including conspiracy and fraud.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer claims New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno approached her in a parking lot last May and told her that Sandy recovery aid for her town depended on her support of a redevelopment project backed by the governor.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in the Christie controversies – Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno denies telling Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer that her town's Superstorm Sandy relief money depended on her support for a redevelopment project proposed by a company with ties to Gov. Chris Christie that he had backed.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in the Christie controversies – Maria Comella, a deputy chief of staff in Christie's office, had been monitoring the media reaction weeks after the George Washington Bridge traffic fiasco. She has been subpoenaed as part of the state legislative investigation.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie controversies – Randy Mastro, a former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former deputy mayor of New York, will head the legal team representing the Christie administration in various investigations relating to the George Washington Bridge political scandal. He once a the federal racketeering lawsuit that forced the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to hold democratic elections and undergo court supervision.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Reid Schar, a key figure in the federal prosecution of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, will assist the special state Assembly committee investigating the bridge scandal that has engulfed current and former aides of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, a Democrat, said he was concerned about the bidding process for using $25 million in Superstorm Sandy relief funds for a marketing campaign to promote tourism at the Jersey Shore.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – E-mails suggest that Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich was the apparent target of an alleged political payback scheme involving traffic jams around the George Washington Bridge. He met with Chris Christie in early January to discuss the matter, and said the governor was "gracious and apologetic."

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – New Jersey Democratic Assemblyman John Wisniewski is chairman of the special state Assembly committee investigating the George Washington Bridge scandal. The panel has subpoenaed current and former top Christie aides as well members of his political organization, seeking documents and other materials. Chris Christie has not been subpoenaed but his office has.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Michael Drewniak, Christie's chief spokesman, has been subpoenaed by a special state Assembly committee investigating the George Washington Bridge scandal. It is seeking documents and other materials. Although there is nothing to suggest Drewniak was involved in the scandal, e-mails released by investigators show he met with a key figure, David Wildstein, two days before Wildstein resigned from his job as a top Christie appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – David Samson, Port Authority chairman, said its board had no knowledge of the George Washington Bridge traffic jam mess until five days after the fact. He has been subpoenaed by the state assembly committee and is also a partner and founding member of Wolff & Samson, the law firm that represented the Rockefeller Group in the Hoboken redevelopment plan.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Patrick Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority, said access lane closures that resulted in the George Washington Bridge traffic mess didn't follow proper agency protocols. He ordered the lanes reopened and has been subpoenaed by the state Assembly committee as part of its investigation into the bridge scandal.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat who also didn't endorse Christie, has raised his own suspicions about his cooled relationship with the administration.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – New Jersey Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat, has been pressing for information about the scandal.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Democrat Barbara Buono is a New Jersey state senator who challenged Chris Christie this past November and lost in a landslide. She derided Christie during the campaign as representing "the worst combination of bully and bossism," and she brought up the George Washington Bridge traffic mess as an example.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Bill Stepien managed Chris Christie's two successful campaigns for govenor. E-mails suggest he was aware of the bridge lane closures, and Christie has asked him to give up his political role. He, too, has been subpoenaed by the state committee investigating the matter.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – Scott Rechler, vice chairman of the Port Authority's board of commissioners, e-mailed other representatives of the agency saying he was disturbed that traffic was snarled "without regard to this being the Jewish high holiday weekend" last September. Rechler was appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

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Who's who in Christie bridge scandal21 photos

Who's who in Christie bridge scandal – E-mails suggest Regina Egea, then a senior staffer and the governor's point person to the Port Authority and other agencies, was aware of concerns the George Washington Bridge lane closures were not part of an ongoing traffic study as the Christie administration initially claimed. She's now Christie's incoming chief of staff and has also been subpoenaed by the state Assembly committee.

Political dirty tricks – Aides and appointees of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have been accused of closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, pictured, for not endorsing Christie for re-election. If true, this wouldn't be the first time an American politician was targeted with dirty tricks -- the practice goes back as far as running for office. Click through to see other examples of less-than-ethical campaign tactics.

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Political dirty tricks7 photos

Political dirty tricks – Prostitution allegations: Sen. Robert Menendez of New York denied that he paid a woman for sex, saying allegations that he did were part of a smear campaign. "Any allegations of engaging with prostitutes are manufactured by a politically motivated right-wing blog and are false," Menendez's office said in a statement. The alleged prostitute later filed a notarized statement saying she had never even met Menendez.

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Political dirty tricks7 photos

Political dirty tricks – Fake letters: Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, running for president, was expected to do well in the 1972 Democratic primary in neighboring New Hampshire. But the Manchester Union-Leader published a letter alleging that Muskie condoned the use of the term "Canuck," a derogatory term used against French-Canadians. Muskie denied the charge but still suffered at the polls in the early primary, which doomed his chances. The Washington Post later reported that the letter was a hoax and was probably written by Ken Clawson, deputy White House communications director in the Nixon administration.

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Political dirty tricks7 photos

Political dirty tricks – Watergate: The break-in at the Watergate office complex was just the tip of the iceberg in regards to what was going on within President Nixon's re-election campaign in 1972. The Nixon machine was hell-bent on destroying its opponents, and Donald Segretti, pictured, was one of the primary dirty tricksters. The Nixon operative printed fliers that attacked Muskie on his stance against Israel, and he placed them outside synagogues. He also pitted Democrats against one another in a tactic he called "rat-f---ing," like the letter addressed from Citizens for Muskie that accused Democratic primary rival Sen. Henry Jackson of being a homosexual and fathering an illegitimate child with a teenager. Segretti was one of several Nixon operatives who ended up in jail.

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Political dirty tricks7 photos

Political dirty tricks – Doctored photos?: Ross Perot was the first major third-person candidate in modern American politics to mount a serious run for the White House. His plainspokenness got attention, and his platform appealed to the far right. Most of all, he was seen as a threat to split the Republican vote with President George H.W. Bush, who was running for his second term. Despite the energy in his campaign, Perot dropped out of the race, claiming that Republican operatives were about to smear his daughter with doctored photos and try to ruin her wedding. Perot never explained what the photograph purportedly showed.

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Political dirty tricks7 photos

Political dirty tricks – The mystery of Alvin Greene: When Alvin Greene suddenly won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in South Carolina, experts asked, "Who?" Greene didn't campaign, had no political experience and was rarely seen in public. A CNN interview led to more questions of whether Greene, pictured, was intellectually capable of running a viable campaign. Others felt that Greene was planted by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who was running for re-election. Greene was cleared by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division before he lost overwhelmingly to DeMint.

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Political dirty tricks7 photos

Political dirty tricks – Swift-boating: Before John Kerry, far right, was elected senator, he won the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam and later protested against the war. When he ran for president in 2004, he spoke out against the Iraq War. Although Kerry was seen as the underdog in the race, he was gaining momentum before a political ad released by the group known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accused Kerry of speaking ill of his fellow veterans and lying to get his medals. Kerry first tried to ignore the ads before denying the allegations, but by then the ads -- and Kerry's avoiding them -- stopped whatever momentum was building.

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EXPAND GALLERY

Christie's first stop after holding a news conference in Trenton was to the town that was targeted.

"I take him for his word," Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich said on "The Situation Room" about his talk with Christie, who he described as "gracious and apologetic."

One political analyst said the governor checked all the boxes an embattled national political figure must address if he wants to demonstrate credibility in a crisis.

"He stood there and took it," said John King, CNN's chief national correspondent, who noted that Christie was uncharacteristically low key as he appeared to understand the gravity of the moment. "It was a very different Chris Christie."

Christie "stunned"

Hailed as a star within the Republican Party for his direct style that resonates with voters and considered someone with potential White House timber, the no-nonsense Christie is embroiled in an episode worthy of a bad Hollywood script. Top aides captured in e-mails swearing and talking tough about a small town mayor who didn't endorse the boss for re-election.

Their response: use the authority of a transportation agency to alter traffic patterns at the head of the George Washington Bridge, creating days of gridlock in Fort Lee. It might've been shaken off as an embarrassing political stunt, but officials say the tie-ups impacted public safety.

Christie's tone and message represented a valiant attempt to disconnect himself from the embarrassing events that have attracted the attention of federal prosecutors, simultaneously pleading ignorance and accepting responsibility.

He said the buck stops with him but emphatically intoned that he had no knowledge of any aspect of the bridge controversy.

"I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here regardless of what the facts ultimately uncover. This was handled in a callous and indifferent way," he said.

He said he was "digging in" and asking questions to find out what occurred.

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Legal questions

Some of those answers may rest with the documents to be released by the New Jersey State Assembly committee.

Among the documents expected to be posted online are 907 pages collected in response to the subpoena of former state official David Wildstein, then the highest-level appointee representing the state at the Port Authority, which operates the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey, the committee spokesman said.

CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin said there was a lot still to unravel regarding communications between the parties and how the decision to disrupt traffic was made.

"That question will be very important for Paul Fishman," Toobin said of the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey.

But Paul Callan, a CNN legal analyst, said he'd bet a criminal case wouldn't materialize from the basic facts of the incident. But, one could be brought, if there's any attempt at a cover-up, he said.

Fishman's office is working with the FBI's public corruption unit to see if any federal laws were broken, a law enforcement source told CNN.

Does this mean Christie's presidential ambitions are dashed?

"Not necessarily," Oxford University historian Timothy Stanley wrote in an opinion piece for CNN.com. "He's a resourceful politician and it's still many months before campaigning starts in earnest. But now, his opponents have a stick to beat him with."

Christie, meanwhile, is facing legal action from Bergen County residents, who filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against the governor and his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, as well as former Port Authority official Bill Baroni and Wildstein, claiming that because of the lane closure of the George Washington Bridge they were stuck in traffic and arrived late to work resulting in loss of wages.

"To find out that the residents and the plaintiffs in this case were pawns in a political game is just disgraceful," Rosemarie Arnold, the attorney representing the six plaintiffs, told CNN.

The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory and punitive damages but the lawsuit did not state a specific dollar amount.

Christie 'blindsided' by e-mails

Christie said he was "blindsided" by the release of the e-mails and text messages on Wednesday that bolstered claims by Democrats that the traffic jams between September 9-13 were meant to punish Sokolich.

Christie and his staff originally blamed the closures and the traffic delays on a mishandled traffic study, something he reiterated at his news conference.

He said he didn't know if it was "a traffic study that morphed into a political vendetta or a political vendetta that morphed into a traffic study."

The incident inconvenienced motorists but also affected public safety, Fort Lee officials said.

The emergency services chief in the town referred to one case in a letter to the mayor obtained by CNN involving paramedics who were delayed in reaching an elderly woman who had suffered a heart attack and died. She was, however, reached by an ambulance.

Further details of the woman's death haven't been released and the mayor told CNN he hopes the traffic tie-ups weren't ultimately a factor.

'Time for some traffic problems'

The correspondence subpoenaed by Democrats investigating the matter is the most damaging evidence so far supporting their assertions that the move was orchestrated because Sokolich didn't endorse Christie's candidacy in November.

The exchanges began three weeks before access lanes to the bridge were closed, two months before Election Day.

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," Kelly, Christie's deputy chief of staff for legislative and intergovernmental affairs, said in an e-mail to Wildstein.

"Got it," Wildstein replied.

In another message about school buses with students on board caught in the traffic jams, Wildstein writes, "they are the children of Buono voters," apparently referring to Barbara Buono, Christie's Democratic opponent in the election that he won handily.

Those cited in the series of e-mails and text messages did not respond to requests for comment or to verify the communications.

Christie said he found out for the first time Wednesday that a member of his staff had been connected to the scandal and immediately fired Kelly.

Wildstein, who left his job in December as the Christie administration's top appointee on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, refused to answer questions about the matter before a New Jersey Assembly committee that later held in him contempt.

Christie said Sokolich "was never on my radar screen" as someone whose endorsement he was seeking and expressed dismay at why anyone would try to retaliate against him.

"This can't have anything to do with politics. I don't even know this guy," Christie said, adding that he would not be able to pick him out if he walked in the room.

Sokolich called his meeting with Christie productive and took no satisfaction from the fallout now pummeling the governor and his administration.

Sokolich said during "The Situation Room" interview that "we're concerned there is more stuff and more issues to deal with" regarding the scandal.

Furious in Fort Lee

In Fort Lee, Debbie Minuto watched Christie's apology and said the disruption hurt a lot of people.

"You can't play with our bridge," she said.

Jose Perez said the controversy illustrates the usual state of politics in the Garden State.

"In the end, who pays? he asked "The people. We're the ones who pay for the political gains."

S.E Cupp, a Republican political strategist and CNN "Crossfire" host, said that Christie was "very believable" and "humble and contrite" during his lengthy appearance that she noted would satisfy some people.

"He's not completely out of the woods," Cupp said, noting that there are more questions to be asked.

CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger said Christie did well, expressing humiliation and apologizing. But she said he did not answer why one of his top aides thought apparent retribution was a good thing to do.

"We went from joking about cones in the road to a very sad day," he said. "I can assure you that this is only the beginning on what's going to be a long investigation into behavior that's reprehensible," Pascrell told CNN in an interview.

As criticisms of Christie's management style of being heavy handed and petty come to the forefront, Christie said, "I am not a bully." But he added that he is "soul searching" about why he created an environment in which his staff felt they had to lie to him.

Ron Brownstein, CNN's senior political analyst and the editorial director for the National Journal, said the scandal doesn't necessarily disqualify Christie from running for President. But, he said "this is something that's going to go on."

Democrats swarm

Christie is now campaigning for fellow GOP governors as chairman of the Republican Governors Association and is seen as a prime political target for national Democrats. Christie said the scandal would not impact his role with the group.

While Christie blamed his staff and accepted responsibility, he also praised his own response to the fallout, noting that he asked Bill Stepien, a sharp-elbowed strategist who managed Christie's two gubernatorial campaigns, to leave his organization and that he fired Kelly.

In exchanges with Wildstein in the notorious e-mail chain, Stepien described the Fort Lee mayor as an "idiot." The e-mails also suggested that Stepien was aware of the maneuvering by that led to the lane closures.

"This is a huge, huge deal," said one Trenton insider. "This was the governor's guy."

When asked about possible White House aspirations, Christie said that is the last thing on his mind.